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I have long thought that Senator John Kerry is wrong on Vietnam. I
don't mean wrong 30 years ago, when, as a decorated combat veteran, he
returned from Vietnam and became a leading antiwar activist. I mean
wrong in the years since, when he has been, with John McCain, the
Senate's foremost
advocate of normalized relations with Vietnam.

There are two objections to treating Vietnam as a normal trade and
diplomatic partner. The first is that the government in Hanoi -- the
Vietnamese Communist Party -- is the same ruthless entity that was the
cause of so much bloodshed a generation ago. The regime that plunged
Vietnam into war, that killed 50,000 Americans and wounded 150,000 more,
is the regime that governs Vietnam to this day.

Normal relations with a former enemy are not unusual. The United
States long ago normalized its ties to Germany, Italy, and Japan, the
Axis powers of World War II. But it did so only after the Nazis, the
Fascists, and the Tojo dictatorship had been defeated and deposed.
Vietnam, by contrast, has never been denazified. There is no difference
between the power that rules in Hanoi today and the one that ruled when
American soldiers were being tortured in the Hanoi Hilton and the Zoo.

That might not matter if the Vietnamese Communist Party had
metamorphosed by now into something decent and enlightened. It hasn't --
and that is the second objection. Vietnam remains a land of repression
and persecution. On a scale of 1 (most free) to 7 (most unfree), Freedom
House, the storied human rights monitor, rates it a 6.5. In its latest
report on human rights worldwide, the State Department notes that
Vietnam's "poor human rights record worsened" last year and the
government "continued to commit numerous, serious abuses," such as
crushing ethnic minorities and tormenting religious believers.

Granted, there are other countries whose atrocious human rights
records have not been a bar to normal trade and diplomatic relations
with the United States. China and Saudi Arabia are two prominent
examples. But the crimes and cruelties of those governments are
frequently denounced in this country, and the nature of our ties to them
continues to be a subject of heated debate.

Kerry and McCain are not the first members of Congress to make the
diplomatic rehabilitation of a despicable regime their personal crusade.
A "Cuba Working Group" on Capitol Hill has undertaken something similar
for the dictator in Havana. But Castro never invaded a US ally or
excruciated American POWs.

Out of deep-seated motivations that perhaps even they don't fully
understand, Kerry and McCain worked passionately for the normalization
of US-Vietnam ties. What I cannot understand is why they don't work with
equal passion to bring freedom and justice to Vietnam's people. Why do
they never cry out against the brutality of the Hanoi government? They
more than most know how steep a price Americans paid in the losing
struggle to hold that brutality in check.

I had planned on writing about this last fall, after Kerry and McCain
were honored at a gala dinner by the World Affairs Council for their
role in normalizing relations between Vietnam and the United States. I
was going to point out that just a few days earlier, a leader of
Vietnam's independent Buddhist church had publicly immolated himself in
Danang to protest the government's denial of religious freedom. I was
going to urge Kerry, who chairs the Senate's East Asian and Pacific
Affairs Subcommittee, to take the lead in moving the Vietnam Human
Rights Bill through the Senate. That bill, which would link
non-humanitarian aid to progress on human rights, had just passed the
House, 410-1.

But the dinner took place on Sept. 10, and the next day there were
more pressing matters to write about.

Almost a year later, however, the issue hasn't gone away. Although
normalization is now a done deal, Kerry still says very little about
human rights in Vietnam. Far from taking the lead on the Vietnam Human
Rights Bill, he has prevented it from coming to a vote. He claims that
making an issue of Hanoi's repression would be counterproductive.
"Freedom and democracy in that country will continue to come through
engagement," he says, "not through symbolic self-defeating acts in the
United States." Any sanctions -- even the mild slap on the wrist allowed
by this bill -- would "strengthen the hand of Vietnamese hardliners" and
set back the cause of human rights.

But Kerry has it backward. By refusing to make an issue of Vietnam's
denial of human rights, he encourages the despots in Hanoi to continue
denying them. After all, why should they have second thoughts about
jailing people for their beliefs or blocking free elections if a key
member of the US Senate is ensuring that there will be no penalties for
doing so?

On the Web site of its Washington embassy, the Vietnamese regime
smugly insists that "the practicing of human rights is mere internal
affairs of each country." Does Kerry believe that? If not, he should say
so, loudly and clearly. Silence in the face of tyranny is dishonorable
-- especially in one who dreams of becoming the leader of the Free
World.

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